Spirit Code

Our lesson this morning comes from the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Church at Rome. Romans chapter eight. Starting in the 22nd verse of that chapter.

We know that the whole of creation has been groaning in labor pains until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen.But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God who searches the heart knows what is the mind of the spirit, because the spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Friends, this is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

So the Postal Service had this message delivered to the oldest Patrick Murphy, first. That had been the practice in that Irish Post Office for many years. If you write a letter to Patrick Murphy of Abbeville County Limerick in Ireland, your message will not go to the right man. Towns in many parts of rural Ireland have only house addresses. They don’t even have street names. So delivering a letter to Patrick Murphy can become a challenge. And into Abbville Ireland, A 40 year old man named Patrick Murphy moved. He was the third Patrick Murphy in the community. So the post office, in a reasonable manner, said deliver it to the oldest one 1st. Mail would be delivered to the oldest one. The oldest one would open it, read it, decide not for me. He would take it to the next Patrick Murphy in line, who would read the mail and go, nope, not for me. And the youngest, Patrick Murphy, would eventually end up with his mail after the neighbors had had it and after the neighbors had read it. It was not an efficient delivery system. The Irish government wanted to fix that, so they instituted their first ever postal code system, zip code. It came to Ireland and it was not like the American zip code. If you send, a letter to 71028, that’s a chunk of Bienville Parish, it might go to Gibsland, it might go to a mount Lebanon. It might end up in a couple other places. But our zip code is is geographic. The Irish zip code assigned an individual number to each house and each business. So mail arrives efficiently.

Today is the day of Pentecost, when all the disciples were together in one room and the Holy Spirit fell. A rush of a mighty wind went through that room, and and tongues of fire rested on all the disciples. They were filled with God’s Spirit. God knew exactly where they were, and God delivered exactly what they needed. And we celebrate the birth of the church. It’s a mighty story. The crowd hears it and they say, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it we hear each of us in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs. In our own languages. We hear them speaking about God’s mighty deeds of power, and all were amazed and perplexed. And they said to each other, what does this mean? Others sneered and said, they’re filled with new wine, and you gotta love Simon Peter. You can tell that the fisherman is not quite redeemed out of him yet. Peter stands up with the 11, raises voices, and dresses the men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem. Let this be known to you and listen to what I say. Indeed, we’re not drunk, as you suppose, because it’s only 9:00 in the morning. I wanted to hear Peter flesh the rest of that out, because, you know, there was another line coming from Simon Peter. Pentecost is the birth of the church. It signals the coming of God’s Spirit on God’s people so that those frail, frightened men and women would overcome the Roman Empire and all obstacles. And the gospel of Jesus Christ would be carried to the world as it existed then and even to our day.

What if God’s delivery system is that exact? That God delivers to us using the God code, the spirit code, just what he needs us to have? And what if some of the frustration and some of the the anxiety we feel in church life is because God is seeking to deliver very specific things to us? We’re just not ready yet. So I want to talk about two words that I believe are a part of the spirit code. And these two words travel in tandem through the story of Pentecost and beyond. The two words that are part of the Spirit Code are these: wait and pray. wait.

You don’t like that one, do you? You just absolutely do not like it. You’re not paid enough money to live in life to wait. Have you been in the new Walmart? It’s glorious. They’ve got a whole new checkout system. For those of us who are checking all of our merchandise out at Walmart. Yes they are. I still refuse to go get the the carts out of the parking lot, by the way, but I will check my stuff out and I want to get behind somebody that knows how to check things out. I used to work in retail. I know how to go swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe and I know when my stuff hasn’t swiped because I don’t hear the beep, beep beep. I do not keep people waiting behind me, and I expect people in front of me not to keep me waiting. Isn’t that how we live? They who wait on the Lord. Shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. The psalmist said, be still. And wait. On the Lord. The passage this morning from Romans. Did you hear, Paul? We wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. But if we hope for what we do not see, what do we do? We wait for it with patience. Part of the spirit code is to learn, to wait. Now, you did that at one time. You were good at waiting. If you’re a parent, the parents of Cameron Wells, Harper Pierce, Reagan, Baker, Georgia, Jack, Lydia, Nora, they all waited. That was list, by the way, of all the kids that have been born into Trinity over the past year or so, the parents waited. They knew they needed to be patient. That someone was, someone was going to be born, and there were going to be oohs and aahs. And those sweet young couples were going to be elevated to the role of parent. And I want to tell you, if you’re a sweet young couple and you’ve been elevated to the role of parent, parent is for a lifetime. You never graduate from being a parent. Wait.

I was reading an article this week about churches. Yes, I do that. And the tenor of these articles have all taken basically the same tack since the pandemic. This article was saying that the last survey, done through Barna, Gallup, the Pew Research Group and some other Christianity Today says that since the pandemic. It’s estimated and surveyed that 40% of all clergy have considered retiring, resigning or running away ‘cause they’re just burned out. That they’re struggling with churches that have not returned to their pre-COVID worship attendance, which, by the way, reach around and pat yourself on the back because Trinity is actually running ahead of our pre-COVID worship attendance. But they’re dealing with worship decline. They’re dealing with church members that are unruly, they’re dealing with unrealistic expectations, they’re dealing with parents who are exhausted because they’re taking their kids from football to baseball to basketball to soccer to softball to all the things you do. And on top of that, the church wants to say, hey, we’ve got some busy things for you to do to.

Your life is not busy enough. We want to bring you back into the house of God. We adopted the thesis that the church had when I grew up, and the church believed if they could keep you at church, they could keep you from sinning. And I learned to sin at church from experts. And we’re doing it again. Just get busy. We need to get busy. And one of the thesis of the article is what the church needs to do is stop, and wait for God’s direction. Every type-A person in this building just went, I can’t wait. I can’t, preach, we got to be doing something and we got to be doing more than we did last year. And if we did it last year, we got to do it bigger and better and louder and promote it, and and just just…

We need more preacher. No, we don’t. Churches from Africa and churches from South Korea come to the United States to look at our churches. And those are the two biggest growing areas for Christianity in the whole world. There are churches in South Korea that have 50,000 members. How would you like to do a potluck for that church? And these preachers come through North America, and they look at the churches and they look what we’re doing and, and and yes, they’re inspired by what we’re doing, but they also grieve what we’re doing because they say almost to a person, what you’re doing, you’re doing without the Holy Spirit, that 95% of the things we do in the church, we do without God. Because we’re good. We don’t need God. Our church calendar is full. And how dare somebody tell us we need to wait patiently on the Lord?

Our two big idolatries in the church. Number one. Busyness. Here you go. Now, as they went on their way, he entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks. So she came to him and asked, Lord. Do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work myself? Tell her then to help me. But the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you’re worried and distracted by many things, there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her. What has Mary chosen? She’s chosen to wait in the presence of Jesus. She chosen to wait for a message from God. She chose to wait for God to move in her life. If we’re going to hear the Spirit of God speak to us and lead us and guide us and empower us, and calls us to be a beacon set upon a hill, if we’re going to listen to the Spirit of God as he creates salt and light. Here at Trinity, we have got to learn to wait. Wait.

Jesus told the disciples last week. I read the passage to you from Luke’s gospel. That he tells them to do go to Jerusalem and wait. First chapter of the book of Acts Jesus is ascending. The angels say to the disciples, he’s told you what to do. Go to that place and wait. And pray. What if the key to becoming the church God wants us to become is actually to wait for God to tell us what he wants us to become? Brother Doug, we don’t need that. We got the manual. We got the book.

So if our first idol is busyness, our second idol is repeating it over and over and over again. I remember, yes, I do, when you used to put the dime on top of the the swing arm, or your needle would stay down in the grooves of your record. And I remember when those needles would get stuck in the record. Go kerflunk, kerflunk, kerflunk, kerflunk. Same word. Over and over and over again. Everybody 55 and is going yeah I remember I too. You had to kind of push the needle over. We can’t do that because we’re too busy in the church being busy, and we’re too busy repeating everything we’ve ever done. Which is idolatry. Oh, brother Doug, you can’t say that. We’ve been doing these things since my mama was a kid. We can’t. Have we waited for God?

So, the New Testament church is. It starts in the book of acts. They’re church that they teach their church involved in Koinonia Fellowship. And that is not red Kool-Aid and cookies. That is sharing everything in common. They were a church that was known by the breaking of bread. Yes, we believe that to be some form of communion. And they were a church known for their prayers. And that’s the second part I want to get to. If we’re going to wait on God, we need to be praying to God. We need to take our prayer life seriously. We need to take the prayers we pray seriously. You know, I was asked recently, by a community group. They said, well, preacher, would you come say a little prayer over what we’re doing? What in the world’s a little prayer? I’m calling on the great God of creation, the Alpha, the Omega, everything in between. The one who spun all this into being. The one who died on the cross for me. The one who is raised victoriously the third day. And you want me to call on him for a little prayer? I wonder how God would answer a little prayer. Just a little prayer.

Now, do you want to hear how God answers prayers? And this? This comes as a warning. This comes as you need to be careful with your praying. As a matter of fact, the mystics and some of the first monks said prayer is dangerous. You don’t need to do it. Why don’t you need to do it? Because God changes things when you pray. Oh yeah, brother Doug, I prayed and this that and that and this. it didn’t work. You missed the point. Prayer is not about God changing situations and circumstances. Prayers about God changing us. What bigger miracle do you need than God changing you, changing your outlook, changing the way you relate? Changing the way you look at the things of God. We come in the presence of a holy God and we say, Holy God, I am here. I have a need. And this is how I have decided. You need to answer my need.

Listen to what the psalmist says. This is how God answers prayer. The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory thunders, the Lord over mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. The Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf in Syrian, like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare. And all in his temple say, glory. We want you to pray a little prayer. Jacob prayed all night. Walked away lame. Jonah prayed in the belly of the fish, got spit out on the shore, and God said, Get to Nineveh. That’s what I told you to do. Not get after it, Bubba. The apostles prayed. And they all ended up being martyred for their faith. Prayer is a dangerous thing. Prayer is not to be entered into lightly. Prayer calls us into the very presence of God. And yes, we don’t know how to pray. But Paul said and reminded us, the spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we aught. You hear what he said? The spirit helps us in our weakness.

The same word that Martha used when she was complaining about Mary. Tell her to help me. If we’re going to pray, the one that makes the Cedars of Lebanon quake that makes the oaks whirl, we need help going to the Lord. We need the Spirit of God in us, praying those prayers that are true, that are hard, that are life changing. We need Pentecost. We need the spirit code. Wait. And pray.

There’s another list of young people that know about waiting. Carly and Ian, A.J., Matthew, Emma, Anders, John Cole, Reese, Brielle, Aubrey, Henry. They waited to grow up. They got to a certain point. They found themselves in confirmation class. And what are they do? They’re waiting for all these weeks. Meanwhile, what’s the church doing for them? Praying. And we need to pray for this group. I want to tell you, there are a couple of those young people in this group that you’re going to get to hear them preach soon. And there are a couple of them that told me, I believe God’s called me to be a preacher. Sixth graders, y’all. You want to consider something scary. Consider being a minister. But they’re following a call. So for them and for the church we’re building for them and the church we are leaving for them, we need to engage in the spirit code of waiting and praying and watching what God delivers to us. And to do that we need to be reminded of our baptisms. Whether we were baptized as infants, whether we were baptized in confirmation, we need to be reminded that people promised on our behalf, and we promised that we would live a Christian life. And so what I’m going to do this morning is I’m going to get the water in the font, and I’m going to invite you to come and remember your baptism.

Remember the people that were there with you. Remember the Sunday school teachers that encouraged you, the pastors that preached to you and took care of you, the parents that loved you and guided you? Remember them. So you can learn the lessons they wanted you to learn and move on. And follow the spirit code of waiting and praying to God. Let us pray. Eternal Father, when nothing existed but chaos, you swept across the dark waters and brought forth light. In the days of Noah, you saved those on the ark through water. After the flood you said in the clouds, rainbow. When you saw your people as slaves in Egypt, you led them to freedom through the sea. Their children, You brought through the Jordan to the land which promised. In the fullness of time you sent Jesus nurtured in the water of a womb. He was baptized by John and anointed by your spirit. He called his disciples to share in the baptism of his death and resurrection, and to make disciples of all nations. Pour out your Holy Spirit to bless this gift of water and those who by touching it, remember their baptisms. Remember that their sins were washed away, they were clothed in righteousness, and that throughout their lives that living and being raised with Christ, they will share in his final victory. All praise to you, Eternal Father, through your Son Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns forever. Amen. So this morning we have confirmands that were baptized last night. And I’m going to they’re going to come and remember their baptism. I was baptized in 1974 and I’m going to remember my baptism. You may been baptized before that or after that, but I want you to come and touch the water, and you may wish to touch your forehead and remember your baptism and be thankful.